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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24432376">looks like sin and tastes like tragedy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/RUNNFROMTHEAK'>RUNNFROMTHEAK</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>kiss me, kill me (i'm yours to break) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Auror Harry Potter, Bottom Harry Potter, Childe/Sire Bond(s), Darkish Harry Potter, Depressed Harry Potter, F/F, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Heavy Angst, Hurt Harry Potter, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Infidelity, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Master of Death Harry Potter, POV Second Person, Top Draco Malfoy, Unhappy Ending, Vampire Draco Malfoy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:13:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,269</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24432376</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/RUNNFROMTHEAK</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You can feel him slipping through your fingers like water. You feel him pulling away with every touch, every caress. He’s half gone as he fucks you, and he isn’t there at all when you fuck him. You wonder, at times, when it started – when he went from unequivocally yours (in his posh pretentious wording) to decidedly not.</p><p>But you know, you knew.</p><p>He calls the vampire Sire, and the vampire calls him exquisite.</p><p>You feel sick.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Sanguini/Draco Malfoy, background Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>kiss me, kill me (i'm yours to break) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1784836</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>200</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>looks like sin and tastes like tragedy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Heyyyy!! Another angsty one-shot!! Pretty standard of me, but oh boy is it painful.</p><p>Poor boys :(</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You can feel him slipping through your fingers like water. You feel him pulling away with every touch, every caress. He’s half gone as he fucks you, and he isn’t there at all when you fuck him. You wonder, at times, when it started – when he went from unequivocally <em>yours </em>(in his posh pretentious wording) to decidedly <em>not</em>.</p><p> </p><p>But you know, you <em>knew</em>.</p><p> </p><p>You’d seen it as he came to you, eyes lost in someone else’s. <em>Sire</em>, he calls the dark and handsome man, but he goes by Sanguini. You remember him from Slughorn’s Christmas party – dark, shadowed, pristinely handsome with a sort of supernatural lure about him. He’s a vampire, you recall, eyes drifting to their interlocked arms. He’s a vampire, and your boyfriend has two puncture marks on the right side of his neck, the side you’d marked with a wet, bruising kiss just before he left.</p><p> </p><p>He calls the vampire Sire, and the vampire calls him exquisite.</p><p> </p><p>You feel sick.</p><p> </p><p>You can’t say you knew you’d lose him at the moment when you notice the little details – the limp, an imperfection in his normally smooth gait, the eyes, lingering on Sanguini whenever his Sire glances at you, the blood, just a small droplet gathered on his lip but you don’t want to think about how it got there – but you think it, contemplate it, just for a second.</p><p> </p><p><em>‘He loves you,’</em> a voice that sounds suspiciously like Hermione argues, horrified that you're even <em>thinking</em> your boyfriend capable of such things.</p><p>A voice that sounds more like Ron fires back, ‘<em>Vampires require consent to turn a wizard. How do you think that git obtained a yes?’</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>But he smiles at you, glowing with it as he had before the war when you hated each other, glowing with it in that enchanting way you’d only seen from a distance, curiosity, and hormones feeding your obsession.</p><p> </p><p>He kisses you, drawing away from his Sire for the first time since he explained his absence, <em>prolonged</em> absence, you should say. He kisses you like he had before, like he has since Eighth Year when Pansy Parkinson and Hermione Granger locked you in a closet until you solved your lingering hostility, and you’d both come out of it bruised and bloodied and freshly shagged and, oh yeah, <em>dating</em>. He kisses you, and you think he’s still yours enough to drop the suspicions, to ignore the way Sanguini’s eyes glint when you catch him looking at you and the way he smirks as Draco embraces you.</p><p> </p><p>His Sire leaves, and he turns to you with that sparkle in his grey eyes, and <em>fuck</em>, you’ve always been helpless for that look. You both know it.</p><p> </p><p>He kisses away your questions and strokes away the lingering pain.</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>Did you ask him to?’</em> you try to say as his tongue slips in your mouth.</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>Did you fuck him?’</em> you try to say as he lines his cock against yours.</p><p> </p><p>And, worse yet:</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>Did he fuck you?’</em></p><p> </p><p>You bottom out for Draco, the way you normally do when he’s drunk on power or needs to feel in control. He bottoms once in a blue moon, and he’s only ever done it for you, so the idea that Sanguini went there too, possibly, makes you hopelessly jealous.</p><p> </p><p>“Still there, Potter?” He asks with a grin, white-blonde hair messily spread across your stomach, where he rests his head.</p><p> </p><p>You nod, keeping your thoughts to yourself.</p><p> </p><p>“I love you,” He says, and you don’t ask him if he said that to his Sire too.</p><p> </p><p>“I love you too.”</p><p>And you do, but you can’t help feeling that death took him from you.</p><p> </p><p>So it hangs between the two of you, like a tense elephant you’re desperately trying to hide.</p><p>Nights where he goes with Sanguini to feeding clubs to ‘<em>learn control’</em> and doesn’t return until daybreak.</p><p>Nights where he goes to his Sire’s flat half-lifeless and comes back buzzing with energy and that bitter tang of blood on his tongue.</p><p>Nights where he goes, and you stay, and you wonder if this entire relationship is worth this painful uncertainty.</p><p> </p><p>It’s a dreadful time for you to lose your thoughtless bravery and gain an ounce of self-preservation, but the fact that he might answer your questions with <em>yes</em> keeps them choked at the back of your throat. Because if he is, if he <em>has</em>…</p><p> </p><p>You think it might kill you. You know it will break you, in ways Voldemort and Dumbledore and the Dursleys never could.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey love,” Draco greets, pressing a kiss to your lips. You allow it, fluttering your eyes shut and trying not to think of where he’d just been.</p><p>He tastes like expensive champagne and blood, a taste you’re unfortunately accustomed to.</p><p> </p><p>“Hullo,” You say evenly as his arms wrap around you, yet again biting down the bitterness that you’d gone to sleep and woken up alone for the last few days. “Had fun?”</p><p> </p><p>He frowns, eyebrows furrowed.</p><p> </p><p>You suppose you’ve never been good at the whole ‘masking your emotions’ thing. Bloody terrible at it, in fact.</p><p> </p><p>“Yes, but I missed you.”</p><p> </p><p>You snort.</p><p> </p><p>“Ah, yes, I always forget how much you miss me.”</p><p> </p><p>Sarcasm used to be <em>his</em> thing, but lately, he’s only with you when you’re having sex, and very few words are required for that. He used to confide in you, used to share his hopes and his dreams and his fears and his weaknesses, but he doesn’t do that anymore, so you don’t either.</p><p> </p><p>You don’t tell him your nightmares are back in full force, but you probably don’t need to with the way his eyes narrow on the bags beneath yours.</p><p> </p><p>“I do,” He tries again, hesitant.</p><p> </p><p>You pull away.</p><p> </p><p>“Please don’t lie to me,” You whisper, pulling off your shirt. You’re already prepared for him, as you always are these days. The sooner he’s in, the sooner he’s gone and you can pretend that looking at the love of your life isn’t worse than walking to your death. “Get what you came for and let me sleep.”</p><p> </p><p>“We don’t have to.”</p><p> </p><p>But you do, because deep down in your poisoned heart where you admit the sort of things you don’t want to think about, you know that if you deny him this you’ll lose him entirely. So you smile a fake sort of smile he’d normally see right through but doesn’t, and you beckon him closer.</p><p> </p><p>Draco is there in an instant, a whirling wind of passion and pain and love and hatred, because you’re damned and you love him, and you’re damned but can’t hate him. He takes you and breaks you and you don’t even realize what’s happening as it happens because you’re numb to it all at this point.</p><p> </p><p>You let him fuck you because he’ll leave otherwise.</p><p>You’ve stopped fucking him because he leaves anyways.</p><p> </p><p>“I can stay,” He says, nude and pale against the black silk sheets decorating the bed you used to share. “I’ve already fed today.”</p><p> </p><p>You roll away from him, leaving his eyes burning into your back as you desperately try to suppress your questions, those things you <em>have</em> to know but don’t want to know.</p><p> </p><p>“Do what you want,” You say as a form of an answer, “I don’t mind.”</p><p> </p><p>You both pretend you’re not lying, and you both pretend the tears falling from your cheeks are from a delayed orgasm rather than pain you can’t acknowledge.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t say he loves you, and you don’t say you love him too.</p><p> </p><p>And most unsurprising of all is when you wake in an empty bed, with no note to excuse his absence.</p><p> </p><p>Pansy meets you for lunch, arm in arm with Hermione, and looking at you with such sadness you’re already cracking before she speaks.</p><p> </p><p>“Did he come home?” She asks, red-painted lips spread in a rare frown.</p><p> </p><p>You take a sip of your butterbeer, staring at the menu rather than looking either of them in their eyes.</p><p> </p><p>“Came, took what he wanted, gone by morning. I’m sure he’s off with his <em>Sire</em> again.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sanguini hasn’t left?” Hermione asks, sounding tense.</p><p> </p><p>“No. He has an apartment in Muggle London somewhere, near the feeding clubs he takes Draco to.”</p><p> </p><p>Pansy and Hermione exchange a look, both frowning.</p><p> </p><p>“What?” You snap, more than a little annoyed, “What does that mean? Why would he have left?”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, normally vampires only stay with their childer when they’re inexperienced, which is typically for the first three months. He’s been here for, what, four? <em>That</em> is not typical behavior.”</p><p> </p><p>You sigh, running a hand threw your messy hair. Normally, you’d attempt to tame it with some poncy gel Draco got you for Christmas last year and a charmed comb, but you can’t be bothered. If it pisses Draco off, all the better in your opinion.</p><p> </p><p>“He’s not mine anymore, ‘Mione. I don’t think he has been since he died.”</p><p> </p><p>Pansy gasps, clutching Hermione’s hand tightly.</p><p> </p><p>“You…you can’t mean that, Potter. Draco <em>loves</em> you, and you love him.”</p><p> </p><p>You laugh bitterly.</p><p> </p><p>“The only thing we do is have sex. I see him less and less and even when I’m bloody well <em>inside him</em>, he’s distant. All he cares about is his Sire, and if Sanguini wants him so bad maybe I should…let him.”</p><p> </p><p>You put your head in your hands, missing your friends’ concerned looks.</p><p> </p><p>“Draco’s always been better than I deserved, <em>more</em> than I deserved. He… I’m just me. I can’t compete with a fucking immortal vampire richer than sin. What do I <em>really</em> have to offer him? My love? Sanguini’s smug enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if he already has Draco’s.”</p><p> </p><p>“Harry,” Pansy pleads, and it’s one of the rare times she calls you by your name. The first time, you’d been half-dead on her operating table from a mission gone wrong. The second time, you’d been drunk and at her door to avoid Draco and the impending fight you’d been fighting all week. Third time…this <em>is</em> the third time.</p><p> </p><p>“He’s going to leave me,” You say, and it hurts as much to <em>say</em> it as it does to <em>think</em> it. “He’s going to leave me, and I have to keep pretending he isn’t fucking someone else or I’ll lose what little control I have. I have to pretend I don’t know so I don’t breakdown, and you both know I won’t come back.”</p><p> </p><p>You remember the seductive intent that your power holds. After you’d died, your power had increased exponentially, as if you’d absorbed Voldemort and grown beyond your natural restraints. It could be the Master of Death thing, but they don’t know about that. <em>No one</em> knows about that, not even Draco.</p><p>Point is, you walk a fine line between powerful and uncontrollable, and you’ve danced over it a few times. It happens in times where you’re numb, not because you can’t feel but because you feel too much. You can become overwhelmed with emotions, can take it all in, and internalize it expertly, but now your magic reacts. You can hide behind your masks and your honeyed words and pretty lies, but your magic will out you eventually.</p><p>And the truth is, you want it to on some days. You want to lose control so much that you <em>shake</em> with magical restraint. It’s a wonder you’ve held on this long, honestly.</p><p> </p><p>“Draco <em>loves</em> you,” Pansy repeats, pleading with you to listen. “He’s not going to leave you, just because his Sire is around.”</p><p> </p><p>“You didn’t deny him sleeping with him though, did you?”</p><p> </p><p>She looks away, pointedly silent.</p><p> </p><p>“Harry, please, you just need to talk with him. I’m certain he’s not going to leave you if he didn’t when he was first turned.”</p><p> </p><p>You give another laugh, still tinged with bitterness, and pass Hermione a few galleons to cover your tab. Her brown eyes are wide and teary, and you can’t deal with this right now.</p><p> </p><p>“If he can’t leave me, I’ll have to leave him I suppose. I can’t chain him to me, not if that’s not what he wants.”</p><p> </p><p>Pansy stands so fast her chair topples to the floor.</p><p> </p><p>“He wants <em>you</em>! He’s wanted you since he knew what wanting someone <em>meant</em>! You’ve known him since you were eleven, and you’re going to give it all up because he’s now a fucking <em>vampire</em>?!”</p><p> </p><p>You smile at her sadly.</p><p> </p><p>“He gave up on me first, Pansy. He stopped caring first. I may have pulled the sacrifice play once, but I can’t do it again. I won’t.”</p><p> </p><p>Because it’s becoming abundantly clear you can’t hide from this, not with stolen warmth the only way he can heat you, not when love only drips from his lips as a lie. You love Draco Malfoy, you’ve loved him longer than you’ve loved just about anyone. He’s a slippery slope of temptation and you’re the unrepentant sinner who can’t stop falling.</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>Barking mad,’</em> Ron had called you, right after you and Draco had announced your relationship, and now, you can’t help but agree.</p><p> </p><p>At some point, you have to have some self-respect. At some point, you have to walk away so you don’t tear each other to pieces. He’s already ruined you, he’d ruined you when the Italian vampire had come attached to him and smug, and he’d been so entranced by the darkness and blood he’d left you alone in the light. But you don’t have to ruin him, as much as you viciously want to, at times when your bed is empty and the night’s cold and you just want your bloody boyfriend back.</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>He’s my Sire!’</em> Draco had snarled at you, on a night where he’d come home reeking of expensive cologne and blood whores and you’d drowned your sorrows in Firewhiskey. It’s pointed and ugly because you can hear what he says in his head too:</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>He’s my Sire, and what are you?’</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>It had sunk in that night; your inevitable loss of one Draco Malfoy, who’d died and come back something that doesn’t care about you as much as he had. You’re the remnants of a past he doesn’t seem to give two shites about, and he’s the future you’d wanted with a desperation you didn’t know you had in you.</p><p> </p><p>He’s the future and you’re the past and he only wants the present.</p><p> </p><p>“Harry?”</p><p> </p><p>You hear him and sigh, slamming down the glass slider full of Firewhiskey on the countertop he’d picked with you, back when you’d started renovating Grimmauld’s Place.</p><p> </p><p>“Are…” Draco hesitates, sensing the tension palpable in the air between you and him. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”</p><p> </p><p>You snort and down the glass in one swallow, relishing in the burn.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re still here,” You drawl, “What’s the occasion?”</p><p> </p><p>He frowns, like he had before he’d fucked you, eyes dragging over you in a way that normally left you aching for his touch. You don’t feel that ache. Not even a stir. You don’t know if it’s because you’re broken or because he is</p><p> </p><p>“I figured we should talk. You’ve been…distant.”</p><p> </p><p>That draws out the laugh you’ve had bubbling since the first time he’d left and not returned for a day. The cold, manic laughter because this is <em>absurd</em> and love shouldn’t <em>hurt</em> this much.</p><p> </p><p>You don’t want to feel.</p><p> </p><p>You’d give anything to not feel.</p><p> </p><p>“Wonder why that is,” You say, delighting in the way his beautiful grey eyes seem pained. “Honestly, not hard to be distant when your bloody boyfriend is never home.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sanguini said it would—”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, <em>Sanguini</em> said!” You shout, uncaring that this was how the last fight and the ten before that had gone because you’re at a breaking point. You feel broken, and even now the Elder Wand is calling to you from where it’s hidden, telling you it’s <em>okay</em> to give in, <em>okay</em> to make Draco hurt the way you hurt. It’s okay to give in to your power, it wants to say. “Of course if <em>Sanguini</em> says it, that’s the most important thing!”</p><p> </p><p>“He’s my Sire,” Draco replies, looking confused and incredulous at your anger. “I’ve explained this before, you know how important that bond is—”</p><p> </p><p>“<em>He turned you!</em>” You hiss, and it’s angry enough that it could be Parseltongue and you wouldn’t notice a thing, “<em>He took you from me and made you into something different!</em>”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m still me!” He cries, and you hate when he cries, hate when his eyes turn red and his pale skin shines with it – but now, right now, his tears feel better than anything you’ve felt in a long time.”Being a vampire doesn’t make me a different person!”</p><p> </p><p>“No, it doesn’t.” You’d never cared about the fangs or the blood, the late nights or the heightened senses. It was the way he never told you how it happened, the way he never spoke of his Sire except in praise. He didn’t tell you where he went, and it’s that you can’t trust. “But cheating does.”</p><p> </p><p>He gapes at you, looking as if you’d run over his crup a few dozen times.</p><p> </p><p>“I…I didn’t…”</p><p> </p><p>You wait for the excuses, the explanations. You want them. You want to love him without hating him, want to touch him without fearing his <em>Sire</em> had done the same. You want to feel something other than pain, but he offers no justification.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t finish his thought, because he’s never been able to lie to you when he sees your eyes, and that makes the choice for you.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m done,” You say, silent tears bitterly sinking into your skin, “I fucking can’t…”</p><p> </p><p>You bite back a sob, feeling lower than ever, lower than you had when you’d found out you were a Horcrux.</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>I’m ready to die,’</em> You’d said, and you wish you’d been ready to stay dead.</p><p> </p><p>“Harry, please—”</p><p> </p><p>You look at him. He’s the love of your life, you know this. He knows everything there is to know about you, every scar that never healed, every bruise that did. He knows every dark secret and evil thought barring one, and he loves you for it.</p><p> </p><p>He <em>loved</em> you for it.</p><p> </p><p>Already you can feel your magic hum dangerously, gnawing at what little restraint you have, that last little bit of pain competing with the onset of numbness you want to let take over.</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>Master of Death,’</em> the wand beckons, ‘<em>Use me. Take me. It is your right. Take your power.’</em></p><p> </p><p>“You chose <em>him</em> the moment you let him bite you,” You whisper, watching your boyfriend fall apart in front of your eyes, “You chose him the moment you slept with him and didn’t tell me.”</p><p> </p><p>His words are a distant buzz compared to the agony that feeling is. Love, hate, anger, joy, sadness…</p><p> </p><p>It’s all too much.</p><p> </p><p><em>Everything</em> is too much.</p><p> </p><p>“…I love <em>you</em>, Harry!” He sobs, and you can’t even feel pity.</p><p> </p><p>You throw an engagement ring at him before you go, the same one you’d spent hours with Pansy agonizing over before Draco had been turned. You’d meant to propose that night, but he’d come back with someone else.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m leaving,” You say as though it isn’t obvious. “Don’t look for me.”</p><p> </p><p>Normally, one couldn’t Disapparate inside Grimmauld’s Place, but you get a kick out of tearing your wards to shite.</p><p> </p><p>You’re done. You’re gone.</p><p> </p><p>‘<em>Come to me,’</em> the wand says once more, and your magic crashes into you in waves. ‘<em>Be with me</em>.’</p><p> </p><p>You finally have nothing left to lose, no denials to hide behind.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Elder wand burns against your skin, but you can’t feel a thing.</p>
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